Jean Grémillon

It was followed by L'Étrange Monsieur Victor (1938), Remorques (Stormy Waters) (1941), Lumière d'été (Summer Light) (1943), and Le ciel est à vous (The Woman Who Dared) (1944).

It was interpreted by some as promoting the moral code favoured by the Vichy government (family, small town values, hard work), while others saw it as a representation of indomitable French spirit which would not be subdued by the temporary political restraints of the Occupation.

[10][3] Immediately after the Liberation, Grémillon embarked on Le 6 juin à l'aube (1945), a documentary about D-Day and the Normandy landings which was both poetic and personal.

It was commissioned by the Ministère de l'éducation national to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1848 revolution, but it was then cancelled by the government after Grémillon had spent 14 months on preparation for it.

[12] His final completed film was André Masson et les Quatre Éléments (1959), in which he reflected on artistic creativity through the work of the French painter.

[14] At that time he was also a member of the underground Comité de libération du cinéma français which was planning for the future of the post-war French cinema.

This concern for realism in his characters and their environment was mingled with a feeling for visual poetry and a sense of everyday tragedy, and it permeated both his documentaries and his feature films.

[5][10][19] Although the reception of some of his most successful films may have been muted by the conditions of the war years, he was nevertheless appreciated by some critics as the best representative of the realist tradition in French cinema during the period 1930-1945, and the equal of his contemporaries such as Clair, Feyder, Renoir, or Carné.